A Partial History of Lost Causes

by Jennifer duBois

In Jennifer duBois’s mesmerizing and exquisitely rendered debut novel, a long-lost letter links two disparate characters, each searching for meaning against seemingly insurmountable odds. With uncommon perception and wit, duBois explores the power of memory, the depths of human courage, and the endurance of love.

In St. Petersburg, Russia, world chess champion Aleksandr Bezetov begins a quixotic quest: He launches a dissident presidential campaign against Vladimir Putin. He knows he will not win—and that he is risking his life in the process—but a deeper conviction propels him forward.
 
In Cambridge, Massachusetts, thirty-year-old English lecturer Irina Ellison struggles for a sense of purpose. Irina is certain she has inherited Huntington’s disease—the same cruel illness that ended her father’s life. When Irina finds an old, photocopied letter her father wrote to the young Aleksandr Bezetov, she makes a fateful decision. Her father asked the chess prodigy a profound question—How does one proceed in a lost cause?—but never received an adequate reply. Leaving everything behind, Irina travels to Russia to find Bezetov and get an answer for her father, and for herself.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Russia, Book Club, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Audiobook

372 pages, Hardcover

First published March 20, 2012

About the author

Jennifer duBois is the recipient of a 2013 Whiting Writer’s Award and a 2012 National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 award. Her debut novel, A Partial History of Lost Causes, was the winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction and the Northern California Book Award for Fiction, and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Prize for Debut Fiction. Jennifer earned a B.A. in political science and philosophy from Tufts University and an M.F.A. in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop before completing a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. Her writing has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Playboy, The Missouri Review, Salon, The Kenyon Review, Cosmopolitan, Narrative, ZYZZYVA, and has been anthologized in Imaginary Oklahoma, Byliner Originals’ Esquire Four and Narrative 4’s How To Be A Man project. A native of western Massachusetts, Jennifer currently teaches in the MFA program at Texas State University.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This debut novel got under my skin and took me to surprising mental places in its tale of people facing lost causes. Irina experiences the decline of her beloved father from Huntington’s Disease and knows from a genetic test that this neurological degenerative disorder is her fate. Not long before her decline is predicted, around age thirty, she discovers a copy of a letter her father sent to a Soviet chessmaster he admired, Aleksanr Bezikov, asking his advice about the “proper way to proceed” when one knows you are going to lose a game or tournament: “What story do you tell yourself when that enormous certainty is upon you and you scrape up against the edges of your own self?” Over 20 years after this letter Irina makes the unusual decision to quit her job as a college teacher in Boston and go out Bezikov for an answer to the question in person.

This seemingly absurd premise becomes more plausible as we go along. If you knew you were going to lose your mind soon to such a disease, how can we judge what could be an acceptable alternative to suicide. Irina, like many of us I believe, imagines she will have the courage to take that way out if she begins to become debilitated. Meanwhile:
When I scanned my life, I found an alarming lack of loose ends. Bezetov, in a way, felt like a loose end.

The book proceeds by alternating between Irina’s backstory and quest to find and connect with Bezitov in St. Petersburg in 2006 and the story of Bezitov from his arrival in 1979 in what was then Leningrad as a boy from rural Sakhalin Island in the far east. We experience his lonely uphill struggle to make his way to success in chess, living in a wretched communal housing complex, falling in love with a prostitute, being led by his only friends into involvement with a dissident underground newspaper called “The Partial History of Lost Causes.” Eventually he accepts the Faustian bargain to play nice with the Breznev regime in return for state support and a comfortable lifestyle. By the time Irina is seeking him out, he is retired from chess competition, in part spurred by a dramatic loss to an IBM supercomputer. The corruption and violent repression of democratic voices has recently moved him to take up a dangerous campaign as an opposition candidate to Putin’s run for premier of the Russian Federation (bearing resemblance to the real-life story of Garry Kasparov).

There is a wonderful convergence of the lost causes of Irina and Aleksandr. While hers is liberating in many senses, his quest puts him on a path of confinement and bodyguard protection. For the average reader, who should realize that none of us can get out of life alive, this polarity makes an enlightening choice of metaphors to tune into.

The writing of duBois is deft and unsentimental, and it is often tinged with sardonic humor. The Irina’s story, told in first person, often resorts to hyperbolic similes not too dissimilar from Chandleresque noir fiction, but with a tone that is both self-absorbed and self-deprecrating. Here is an example from when Irina arrives in Russia:

“Business or pleasure?” said the customs official, his head cocked to one side, his expression an unlikely blend of paranoid suspicion and boredom.
I thought about it for a moment. Pleasure seemed absurd as I looked past the man and into the airport—at the fraying upholstery on the walls and the truncated skeletons of what must have been, at one point, been chairs. The air was bizarrely cold. Forlorn old women squatted by the windows. Women my age manned kiosks, their gum snapping like rubber bands against skin. A dog with the size and grace of a hyena stalked one corner, and nothing in his manner suggested that he was employed at the airport.

This quote, based on her experience playing chess in Harvard Square, highlights the self-deprecation aspect:
My favorite opponent was Lars, who stationed himself at the chess sets with such fierce commitment that I’d forgot he could, if he wanted to, get up and walk away. The first day I met him he took one look at me and said, “You look like somebody who feels sorrier for yourself than is strictly necessary.”

Aleksandr’s story, though narrated in third person, gets deep into his mind and feelings, and they are rarely happy and light, given his pawn-like roles amid the large forces of Russian history. Here is a sample of his experience of his loneliness in his cramped housing situation, listening through the thin walls:

The old woman, Aleksandr decided, was talking to her dead husband. In early versions, he imagined for them a love story so beautiful that he’d have to stop thinking about the old woman sometimes—when the wind sliced through the side of the building like razor through cotton, and the enormous coldness of the solitude made him somehow afraid, as though he’d-been cast into outer space--and he’d have to go to his chess books to recover.

Eventually we come to experience Irina having a favorable impact on Aleksandr’s outlook and vice versa. By the end there is a surprising uplift over their personal evolution and heroic persistence with their lost causes. I was really impressed and satisfied with this read.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me confront some pretty uncomfortable feelings. It’s not at all what I bargained for, and I’d venture to say that’s true for a fair number of other readers as well, yet at the same time it’s far more. I was initially torn on how to rate the story but ultimately, I felt that the challenges presented here were worthwhile and added to the experience, for better or worse. Discomfort is not always a bad thing and in this case it landed the extra star.

As you may have already surmised, this is not an easy read. It is not a beautiful story about people continuing to fight the good fight in the face of a lost cause. Instead, it’s a contemplative and often brooding study of two people who are struggling to validate their own existences, wondering whether the ends will ever justify the means and knowing they probably won’t live long enough to find out. And frankly, that seemingly sad premise really only scratches at the surface of the story, so you’ll have to read it to fully experience it.

The writing is, at the risk of sounding cliché, layered and reflective. Jennifer duBois is creative in her word usage, shaping a narrative that flows well but can be very complex at times. I had to re-read sections when I didn’t pay enough attention the first time to absorb it properly. We’re also treated to richly detailed descriptions of St. Petersburg, Moscow, and the vast miles of country between them as seen from the window of a train. It’s not perfect, some passages go on a little too long and made me want to skim, but it’s overall quite lovely.

”The future is with him, he thinks -- at least as much as the past and all the people who live there. He can sense it, like the sketchy suggestion of an undiscovered country emerging from the mist, or the shape of an endgame materializing somewhere deep in his psyche. Below him, the lights of Petersburg shine like that future -– cold and improbable and galaxy-bright, but closer with every moment of descent. Maybe he will see it someday.”

Despite the four stars, I still think this may not be for everyone. The subject matter is heavy but it’s interesting and informing and the satisfying ending made it worth the seven days it took me to get through 372 pages.

[Chrissie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I definitely like this book, but its main thrust is not even alluded to in the book description! One of the two main characters is both a world chess champion and a Russian political activist. This character is Aleksandr. He hates Putin. The most interesting part about this story is that Aleksandr is modeled on a real person, Gary Kasparov! His name should have been mentioned in an author’s note. The philosophical question of how or why or even if one should try to battle against a lost cause was for me a peripheral theme, even if that is why I picked the book. I doubt that your thoughts on this topic will be changed after reading the book.

The central theme, and that which should determine if you want to read this book or not, is your interest in political dissent in Russia from 1979-2008.

The similarities between Aleksandr and Gary Kasparov are outstanding. If you want to be surprised about how the events roll out, don't look at Wiki until after you have completed the book. In this respect, little is fictional.

There is a second central character, Irina Ellison. She is fictional. It is her story that connects to the philosophical question of fighting against lost causes. Her father died of Huntington's disease. A medical test has shown that she will begin to exhibit the disease by the age of 32. She is 31. Her emotional response to this information is intertwined with Aleksandr's, he too hasn't a chance of becoming a political opponent to Putin. Should he give up? Should she give up? What exactly do you do with the knowledge of impending doom? The dilemma is brought up in other ways too. Can a chess player win against a computer game? It is all very fine to intellectually analyze how one would react, but how will you REALLY feel. The book does an excellent job of making you feel, not just how you might think. These are two different things. There are however long sections of the novel that have little to do with this theme; if the Russian events are going to bore you, then I would not choose this book. I found the review of historical events reported in the news over the last decades interesting. You will recall many events.

The story is told through two first person narratives - Irina's in 2006 and Aleksandr's, beginning in 1979 and continuing till 2007, when the two stories intertwine. In the audiobook two different narrators are employed. Irina's narrator is Kathe Mazur. Aleksandr's is Stephen Hoye. I really enjoyed Mazur's narration. It is contemplative and slow. She is thinking. She quietly reflects on her emotions. And in fact there is humor in these lines. I did not enjoy Stephen Hoye's narration. In fact I had to force myself to pay attention to the author's words because I so disliked the intonation employed. It is has an insinuating, ingratiating tone throughout. Pleading, whiny, downright disagreeable. When I succeeded to turn of the sound and just listened to the lines themselves, I enjoyed the novel much, much more. Then I would slip back and get annoyed again. I do not believe that the author’s words warranted such a tone.

To enjoy this book you must be interested in the political events occurring in Russia since the 80s.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine that you’re right in the prime of life – 30 years old—and discover that you are living under the shadow of Huntington’s Disease, a degenerative disorder that killed your father and will destroy your body and then your mind.

As you’re struggling to cope, you come across a letter from your now deceased father to the world chess champion Alexsandr Beztov who is now on a quixotic quest to unseat Russia’s Vladimir Putin. In it, your father asks for guidance on what to do when the enormous certainty is upon you that you are playing a losing match? You have nothing left to lose, so you travel to Russia to unearth the answer and eventually realize that both you and Alexsandr are searching for some of the same answers, for different reasons.

This is, perhaps, one of the freshest and most imaginative debuts I’ve read lately, and Jennifer DuBois approaches it with grace and thoughtfulness. Some of her prose – truisms, really, stated in the most eloquent ways – tackle that all-important question of why we live at all if we know we cannot win. She writes with a hard-won maturity that most people who are twice her age have not yet gleaned.

Take this observation for example: “Personality is continuity. Personality is the myth of continuity. And the person is lost when nothing an be old to him, when nothing can be familiar, when all parallels, all symbols, all analogs are lost; when the world is perpetually stunning; when we are all newborns again, at last.” Or this one: “I thought about what Aleksandr had said about chess, about the paralyzing effects of imagination. I knew that to be true. Any time I let my mind wander more than three steps into the future, it reached the limits of comprehension and fell off the edge.”

If prose like this appeals to you, then you must read this book. Narrated in the first person by Irina, the young woman with Huntington’s, and by the one-time chess prodigy Alexsandr, Partial History is rich with description of the USSR in the 1980s; the dreariness, the poverty, the paranoia, the overriding political considerations.

There are some missteps that keep Partial History from quite reaching a 5-star rating (although it’s close enough that I am rating it that way). The novel soars when the questions are the most lofty: how to move forward when the odds are stacked against you. When tackling the Soviet bureaucracy, the narrative tends to slow and the sinister and illegal activities seem to be drawn with too fine a point.

Still, from start to finish, the book is beautifully plotted with an organic ending, the writing is luscious in many instances, and the themes manage to be universal and original at the same time. It’s wonderful to see a debut author take literary chances and reveal the wisdom of the human heart and its courage under fire.

[Marica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cosa fare quando si realizza che si sta per perdere
La domanda centrale del libro è: cosa fare quando si realizza che si sta per perdere. Il problema può essere discusso in termini filosofici ma è anche piuttosto concreto: cosa fare se si sa di contenere una bomba ad orologeria che smantellerà progressivamente la capacità di gestire il proprio corpo; cosa fare quando si è travolti da un meccanismo iniziato senza sapere quale sarebbe stato il costo in termini personali: così alto che comunque vada sarà sempre una sconfitta. Il libro rinfresca la memoria sulle vicende mediante le quali Putin ha consolidato il suo potere e sono le più sfacciate manifestazioni di indifferenza all’opinione pubblica che si siano mai sentite. Tuttavia l’autrice non si sofferma tanto sull’aspetto politico (che si commenta da solo) quanto su come si modifica la vita personale del protagonista, da bambino di talento dell’isola di Sachalin a uomo politico di opposizione: gli amici sono morti, l’amore di gioventù è stato sognato per trent’anni, la moglie lo lascia perché colloquia coi giornalisti politici USA ma non può uscir di casa a fare una passeggiata con lei, per timore di un attentato. Si tratta di un’opera prima, coraggiosa e ambiziosa, scritta benissimo. Ho apprezzato molto le immagini che l’autrice lascia cadere fra le pagine, i colori delle albe, gli odori della città, le passeggiate lungo la Neva, la terra vista dal cielo, le stelle grandi e brillanti. Sono immagini così evocative che per me è quasi un libro illustrato. La risposta all’interrogativo è: perdere con stile. A ciascuno sta di comprendere cosa deve fare. Data l’opera prima, mi chiedo cosa scriverà dopo.

[Roberto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Con che spirito possiamo giocare una partita quando sappiamo fin dall’inizio che perderemo? Che cosa si fa quando si sta affrontando una causa persa in partenza? Ha senso per noi combattere sapendo che comunque saremo sconfitti? Quali stimoli, quali obiettivi, quali storie bisogna raccontarsi per andare avanti quando la certezza della sconfitta incombe su noi stessi?

Il romanzo “Storia parziale delle cause perse” tenta di rispondere a queste domande e lo fa raccontando due storie molto diverse, ma anche concettualmente molto simili.

La prima è quella di Aleksandr Bezetov, giovane e precoce scacchista che diventa rapidamente campione mondiale mentre nel suo paese, la Russia, il regime soffoca qualunque forma di libertà. La causa persa di Alexandr è contro il regime di Putin. Infatti quando questo gli propone ponti d’oro in cambio di collaborazione, lui sceglie l’impegno politico e la dissidenza e tenta di candidarsi alla presidenza, pur sapendo di non avere alcuna probabilità di vittoria e di correre il rischio di essere eliminato.

"Ci candidiamo per perdere, e perdendo ci faremo notare. Ci candidiamo per farci bloccare. Ci candidiamo per farci assassinare."

La seconda storia è quella di Irina Ellison, giovane trentenne americana che scopre di aver ereditato dal padre una malattia degenerativa che di lì a poco le inibirà le funzioni cognitive, spegnendole la mente molto in anticipo rispetto al suo corpo. E la sua causa persa è contro la malattia. Ha senso vivere, ha senso combattere, ha senso impegnarsi, se tanto la fine l’attende dopo pochi mesi? Una cosa del genere sconvolge la vita perché cancella il futuro, rende improvvisamente prezioso il tempo che si vive e nel contempo ci costringe a chiederci quale sia il senso del tempo che rimane da vivere.

“Anche se non si riesce a vedere tutto ciò che il mondo può offrire, forse stare al mondo per qualche tempo è già abbastanza. Forse è abbastanza. In ogni caso dovrà bastare.”

Due storie diverse, due partite a scacchi, una contro il regime, l’altra contro la malattia, che si intrecciano e che saranno giocate tenacemente fino alla fine, magari sacrificando pedine per ottenere qualche vantaggio di posizione. Perché per poter sconfiggere anche il più potente avversario devi credere di potercela fare.

Perché nonostante tutto, anche una sconfitta alle elezioni può essere il primo passo per una vittoria seguente. Perché la vita ha in ogni caso come epilogo la morte. Perché ci sono valori per i quali vale la pena combattere, indipendentemente dal risultato finale. Perché forse la partita va affrontata per poter imparare qualcosa dalla sconfitta.

“Quando non si ha più niente da perdere tanto vale buttarsi in un’impresa disperata”

Il libro lancia anche un attacco deciso e documentato contro Putin e il suo regime in Russia. L’impegno negli scacchi del giovane Alexandr è sostituito nella maturità con l’impegno politico, con la lotta contro quella facciata democratica che copre fatti sanguinari quali il delitto della Politkovskaja, gli attentati del 1999, la strage di Beslan, i fatti relativi al sottomarino Kursk. La battaglia di Alexandr diventa quella di dimostrare a un Occidente troppo distratto il coinvolgimento di Putin in tutti questi fatti.

“C'è qualcosa di più importante di poter scrivere ciò che si pensa, dire quello che si pensa e camminare lungo un fiume senza guardie del corpo?”

Il libro è scritto in modo limpido, lineare ed originale, è ricco di metafore, è interessante e ricco di riflessioni sull’amore, sulla malattia e sulla memoria. Uno dei rari libri in cui non è semplice capire in anticipo dove vuole andare a parare l’autore.
Alla fine i due protagonisti decidono di giocare fino in fondo la loro partita, ma modificando parzialmente il loro obiettivo. E si accorgono quindi che l'inevitabile sconfitta non è più così importante.

[Naomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this.

One of the many parts that caught my attention, which I then read over and over again.

'And then I told him something simpler and just as true: sometimes there are things we don't understand even about ourselves. Sometimes we run out of the time to keep trying to unravel them, and we have to sit back and content ourselves with a shrug. But I think there are some things that we'd never understand even if we had forever to wonder. There are things that - even if we had unnumbered lifetimes to think about them - we still wouldn't know.'

[Seamus Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

How should we conduct ourselves when victory is impossible? A Partial History of Lost Causes is a moving exploration of this question on several levels. From playing an unbeatable opponent in chess, to running against an unbeatable opponent in an election, to living life in the shadow of a debilitating disease . . . Everyone's life is filled with lost causes and since, SPOILER ALERT, every one of us is going to die, our very lives are essentially lost causes. So: how should we go about losing?

Many of the official reviews of A Partial History of Lost Causes note that that it is an excellent or accomplished first novel -- which is certainly true. Yet it seems an unnecessary hedge to praise this as a *first* novel. It's an excellent, accomplished novel. Full stop. This is a genuine attempt to grapple with a central human concern. The story is compelling, the characters well-drawn, and much of the writing is beautiful and filled with fresh descriptions and comparisons. If some of the middle is a little rushed and some of the thematic links a little too on-the-nose, the overall effect of this genuinely moving novel more than makes up for it.

[tefanee · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 stars

It's not that this book wasn't good enough. It was a wonderfully written story, in fact. But you'd have to have an extremely sound mind and strong heart to go through it and like it entirely. And that's something I don't have much at the moment. This book was depressing, so depressing in fact that it affected my mood for the entire week. Even now I feel like my brain has been fried, both by the complicatedly illustrative narration and the plot that lasted decades. And the chess. I love playing chess, but Aleksandr's view of the game made it seem lackluster as I read through.

However maudlin it may have been, Aleksandr's and Irina's story have made me appreciate life and democracy and joy just a little bit more.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

After a series of less than wonderful reads, I wanted to read a book that just called out to me from my shelves. I chose this book for its title. Also because it is set partly in Russia and I am a sucker for books set in any time period of that country. I was so rewarded!

It is not a perfect novel, whatever that means. Ms duBois is young, named one the National Book Foundation's "5 Under 35" for 2012. This is her first novel though according to her bio she has studied hard and practiced much. All of that speaks well for her but I think her biggest asset is her imagination.

The story opens as Aleksandr arrives in 1979 Leningrad, a young chess prodigy having traveled for six days from the extreme eastern end of Russia. He is unsophisticated and clueless, but has escaped a hopeless, dreary life and dares to hope for his future. His arrival coincides with Stalin's centenary and within a year he will have survived the indignities of substandard communist housing, the cold, and the chess academy, while befriending a wanted trio of dissidents and falling in love.

In the second chapter Irina begins her story. It is 2006 in Cambridge, MA. Irina learned to play chess from her father, a college level music teacher, fierce student of Cold War politics, and eccentric, who died of Huntington's disease. Irina observed at close hand his ten years of decline and death. Knowing that Huntington's is hereditary, she got herself tested and learned at age 22 that she had a 50% chance of hitting the onset of symptoms at age 32.

Meanwhile, Alexandr became the chess champion of the Soviet Union; Irina's father had sent him a letter and received a reply but not an answer to an impassioned question. So began the connection which powers the plot.

When I was in college, one of my best friends got cancer and was given a year to live. She had been blind since the age of three but was an extremely adventurous, empowered person. She rode bikes, knitted, played guitar and was doing extremely well at the University of Michigan. She spent the last year of her life touring the world.

In 2004, my father died in an Alzheimers home after his own decade of decline. I have a slight worry about going that way myself. I often wonder if I should just throw caution to the wind and live as wildly and dangerously as I can before I fall into any sort of reduced condition. That may be why I loved this book so much.

When Irina turns 30, she goes to Russia looking for Alexandr. Her father's question in his letter was, "How does one proceed in a lost cause?" By this time, Alexandr has faced a few lost causes of his own. Irina needs an answer. She has become equal parts depressed and driven.

I did not love every page. Ms duBois weaves a convoluted tale. Irina is hard to know, maddening at times; Alexandr a most unlikely hero; St Petersburg and Moscow dangerous, mysterious cities protecting secrets both ancient and modern. I often felt lost and confused, but never was I tempted to give up reading. Ultimately what is a mash-up of tragedy, philosophy, humor, and adventure came together in marvelous ways and a finale of hope for the world.

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

How do you rate a book where your love for the writing and the ideas exceeds your love for the book itself? Where the characters' conflicts are interesting but the characters are somehow less so? It's a strange experience when some aspects of the book deserve 4-5 stars while others are more of a 2. But that was this book.

The premise of this book was very interesting, and kind of a slow burn where you gradually come to fully appreciate it as you approach the finish line and even more once you're done with the book. Irina, an academic and amateur chess player, has lost her father to Huntington's and recently learned that she is genetically predetermined to suffer the same fate. She happens on her father's letter to one Alexander Bezetov, a Russian chess champion turned politician, a letter where her father asks Bezetov for advice about what to do when you know you're fighting a losing battle. Although the question is particularly poignant in light of Irina's father's fate, no response is found among her father's papers. Irina, who feels she doesn't have much to lose at this point, decides to travel to Russia in search of Bezetov's answer to the question which is now personally meaningful to her as well. Meanwhile, in alternating chapters, we learn of Bezetov's rise to fame as a chess champion, his dissident activities, and his ever-changing relationship with the establishment of the Soviet Union.

Although the writing was beautiful, the book was a bit overwritten and plodding at times. The premise is great but not a whole lot happens. The characters' situations are interesting but the characters themselves somehow fail to make you root for them. I suspect this may not have been the best choice for audio, since its often slow pacing caused me to space out at times and I sometimes felt that I missed important information.

Overall, though, this is a book with clear strengths even if it didn't quite hit the mark. I will definitely keep an eye out for this author's next book.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

First, a disclaimer: I know the author, as I have taken writing courses from her. She's lovely, and insightful, and possesses an enviable and incredible talent.

Her debut, at its best moments, is both heartbreaking and profoundly intelligent. Dubois distills the essence of experience in such a way that it resonates emotionally, regardless of our interest in or attachment to her characters, or even our investment in the storyline. And therein lies the problem: nothing much happens. The action doesn't compel us to move through the novel so much as our enjoyment of her words. I picked it up, or didn't, and it didn't much matter, though I could unequivocally say I enjoyed myself when I did manage to fit in a few pages or more. As such, it took a couple of months to work my way through the text, where I might polish off another similarly-sized novel in a day or two if I cared to know the ending (and I didn't, possibly because the ending is a rather foregone conclusion, regardless of the means with which it was carried out).

Dubois has a few distracting "tics" that diminish the experience somewhat (e.g. she is perhaps a bit overfond of metaphor, sometimes using two or three in a single sentence when one would suffice, and resorting to its use for nearly every physical description), but they're easily excused by the reader because they're just so well formed. If one simply enjoys beautifully-crafted and compelling prose for the sake of it (her title alone speaks to her ability in this realm), then this novel is absolutely worth a read.

[Leanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Partial History of Lost Causes alternates between two points of view - Aleksandr's and Irina's. Aleksandr is a chess genius extraordinaire who arrives in Leningrad to attend a chess college and gets tangled up in the opposing party's quest against the Party, eventually launching his own doomed presidential campaign a couple of decades later. Irina is a lost young woman wrestling with her own mortality - she watched her father deteriorate slowly due to Huntington's disease and a genetic test has confirmed she is headed for the same future. When she discovers a letter her father wrote to Aleksandr before his mind started to unravel, she embarks on a "last adventure" to find Aleksandr and learn the answer to her father's questions (which are parallel to her own).

There were several things I really liked. I found the timeline very interesting - Aleksandr's chapters span 20+ years, while Irina's are only a couple, and of course they intersect about two-thirds in. I also loved the overall theme of the novel - what do you do when you're doomed to fail, when there is concrete evidence that your days are numbered and you're just waiting for the end?

I was more engaged by Irina's chapters - perhaps it was the format, as Irina's were told in first person, whereas Aleksandr's were in third person, but overall she just seemed more fleshed out, more sympathetic. I'm a sucker for a little bit of love story, even if it's just in the background, and some of the passages Dubois wrote about Irina and her feelings for Jonathan were quietly beautiful. And then there was Lars - his significance in the novel was a little less than I had imagined when he was introduced, because he was such an intriguing character, but I loved him anyway, and it was nice to see him sneak in there at the end for a last word.

I am not a very politic-y person, and that didn't change after reading this book - but I did learn a thing or two about Russian politics from reading it. I have a love/hate relationship with books that cause me to turn to Wikipedia; they get my brain juices flowing and teach me interesting new things, but sometimes I just want to read without having to look elsewhere to understand the context.

I've mostly listed the reasons I liked the book, and I'm actually finding it more difficult to articulate what held me back from a higher rating. All of the elements of a great novel were there, the writing was lovely, and I was reasonably moved by the story itself. But I was never completely pulled into it - I would enjoy it as I read it, but I was never compelled to come back to it immediately, and I didn't think about it for days after I finished it (although I did actually like the ending - I found it poetic).

However - this is still worth a read, and I will keep an eye out for Dubois' next release. 3.5 stars.

[Amy Bond]

I have only read good reviews about this book so far, so perhaps I am alone in my assessment, but I had a really hard time getting in to the characters. As someone who really loves the game of chess, I thought I was going to really like this book - former chess champion Alexander, is one of two main protagonists, but I had a hard time following why he was always so sad. His daughter, Irina, the main character, suffers from an insurmountable fear that someday her brain will give way to Huntington's disease and this leads her to live a fearful, quiet, boring life. My issue is that I kept wanting Irina to be a stronger person because I like strong female leads. Her fear of death causes her to do...not much, rather than allowing her the freedom to live adventurously - the character I wished had been developed. Ultimately I didn't like the book because I often felt disconnected from the characters, wanting them to be stronger, to be more than what they were. DuBois is a beautiful descriptor. For instance, in a scene set in Harvard Square, I could almost smell the New England fall air and the writing is simply beautiful.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writing in this book is beautiful, assured and smooth, sometimes even skirting close to poetry in its startling use of metaphor. I loved it. The story was interesting, mixing real characters and fictional ones. With the chess player based on mostly on Gary Kasparov, and Vladimir Putin as himself, I often wondered how much was real and how much could just as well be real.

I had to suspend my disbelief in the protagonist’s rush to contact the chess player after learning she would most certainly come down with Huntington’s disease, but Dubois writes almost well enough to convince me.

Once we get to Russia, though, I was in for the long haul. The book was fascinating, and quite an indictment of Putin’s Russia.

This book was even good enough that I can forgive Dubois for the Deus ex Machina at the ending, where she solves the problem of Irina’s looming Huntington’s. But I can’t forgive the neat happy little bow she ties things up with at the very end. Nevertheless, it was a wonderful read.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a bit of an uneven story for me so my review, I’m afraid, is going to end up the same. The author has a great command of the written word and uses it to its greatest strength. Description, dialogue, word choice all of it flows with wonderful effortless as you read. I did not care for the parallel story lines. Irina’s story was engrossing and involving and kept me reading. However, Aleksandre’s was slow, plodding and just generally uninteresting. It was a chore for me to read those portions and it lowered my overall enjoyment of the book. I think perhaps there was too much story attempted here and this is what caused Aleksandre’s storyline to be less than stellar. I would like to read more by this author but do hope future stories will be more in line with the engaging writing done with Irina.

ARC Galley Proof

[Ostap Bender · Rating 5 out of 5]

First of all, some of the best writing I’ve had the pleasure to read in a long time; Dubois is very talented.

In this story, a young American woman has learned she has inherited Huntington’s disease, which she had seen take away her father’s mind such that he was no longer himself for years before dying. Average symptoms begin at age 32, and she doesn’t want to burden the loved ones around her by having them watch her go through the same thing.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, a chess prodigy grows up in squalor and hardship in Soviet Russia, but has some opportunities to make a better life for himself because of his abilities. He falls in with political dissidents and runs a huge risk by distributing their newsletter. He compromises his ideals somewhat as he rises to chess champion of the world, but later in life is openly critical of the government under Putin, and runs for office against him.

The American finds that her father had written the Russian a letter, asking him how he coped with a chess match at the point in which he knew he was doomed to lose. Somewhat absurdly, she drops everything in her life and travels to Russia to find him, and to ask the same question.

The plot may seem a little odd, but it’s woven together well and I found this a wonderful book.

What are the lost causes? Facing a cruel terminal disease that, before killing, will slowly strip one’s mind of all memories, and ability to control one’s body. Being at the top of one’s game, but knowing that someone (or something) will come along and knock you down soon enough. Attempting to make progress against a totalitarian, corrupt regime, knowing that one’s cause cannot win, at least in the short-term, and knowing that to struggle is to make oneself a target, and yet doing so anyway.

What does it mean to come to terms with one’s transience, with the meaninglessness of one’s tasks in life? How does one live under such compressed and absurd circumstances, how does one love? Because of their situation, they are improbably bound together, and have heightened awareness to the conditions that I suppose we all face in lesser form. There are no magic answers to the hard questions, as there are none in life. They continue on with introspection and dignity, and the result is both poignant and uplifting.

Quotes:
On death:
“My father had a limitless capacity to be touched by the histories of other nations, the fates of other people – and more than that, he loved the intricate ballet of advance and retreat. He loved it all in real life as much as on the chessboard. Like Lear – like anyone – he wanted to see who won and who lost. He wanted to see how things would turn out.
And if I’m honest, that’s a good part of my grief these days. Not a majority – that’s composed of good old-fashioned fear, the animal will to survive tangling with the cold pronouncements of medical science. But a fairly significant amount – maybe 15 percent or so – is just sorry that I don’t get to see the end.”

On the death of a parent:
“I opened the window and thought about my father. Like most people, I was not my best self at twelve. And it bothered me sometimes to think of this version of myself as the last vision my father had of me before his mind went – as if this made any sense. As if he was standing on the opposite end of some magic beam of rainbow light, remembering me in my youth, carrying around a smudged mental snapshot of who I used to be. Really, it was the other way around. But in weak, sentimental moments, I wanted to tell him: look. I grew up with a sense of humor, anyway. You would have liked me if you didn’t already.”

On democracy:
“Democracy is the least bad form of government, he says. It maximizes the liberty of the individual, and in this world – in this uncertain, claustrophobic, ever shrinking world, but really, in any world – is that not the highest good? Is there anything more important than writing what you think, and saying what you think, and walking along a river at night unsupervised? Maybe he doesn’t say that last part. And one day in Russia, he says. One day in Russia, too.”

On empathy, or lack thereof:
“I always felt guilty for ruining the other person’s day, and the other person invariably felt guilty if their day hadn’t been sufficiently ruined. I will admit it sometimes felt strange to me to make the confession to someone and later catch them laughing, or flirting, or eating a sandwich, instead of tearing at the injustice of it all or sitting quietly at the center of a grand and monstrous grief. The disaster of my life might be only the worst thing another person heard that afternoon; they might have forgotten by dinnertime; they might have been more heartbroken by watching certain movies. I’m always confronted, quite horrifically, with my exact net worth in the eyes of the other person – whether they cry, or have to sit down, or pull their mouth into the expression of a frown even though their eyes are somewhere else.”

On love lost, and memories:
“And then, just like that, her mouth was on his, although he wasn’t sure how. One moment he’d been speaking, and another moment the space between their mouths had disappeared. He drew one hand to her face, brought the other to feel the small instrument of her rib cage. Then she was drawing back, with each beat of his heart she was disappearing from his arms, and it seemed to him that he would always remember this: a sequence of snapshots of a woman, laughing with her eyes down, in each image a little farther away.”

And this one, which I loved:
“It was startling how completely an absent person could fill the empty spaces in your brain – how all the uncharted dark matter could illuminate to reveal nothing but the same face, the same voice, carbon-copied over and over like a piece of underground artwork. It was bewildering, the way that reality could be overtaken, wrestled down, and murdered by the sheer weight of possibility. It was nonsense, he’d be the first to admit, to pine for a year for a woman whose moment in his life had been incidental, glancing, as implausible as a meteor shower or a brain aneurysm. She had bobbed to the surface of his life, then disappeared again. She’d hovered for half an hour above his personal lake of loneliness, a sea monster in a smudged photograph, probably not even real. She’d been above water for minutes. She’d barely even waved.”

And:
“Then I understood, from the way Aleksandr clenched his jaw and the way he erased his eyes and the way his words seemed to shiver on a tightrope, that he had loved her. And I was struck by the unforgivable stupidity of refusing love. And I was further struck by the violence of my own mistake, and I felt lucky for the limited time I would have to live with it.”

On meaninglessness:
“When you get ready to die, you look back over a lifetime and try to unravel its enduring questions. You retroactively assign meaning to chaos, you make coincidence into portent. You scan your past for moments that might have been road signs, and then you try to see which way they were pointing. It’s an unrelenting striving for tenuous links, a dazed hunting for patterns that may or may not exist. You are a child looking for a lost thing in the sand, racing against the tide and the approaching darkness, trying desperately to remember where you might have buried it.”

On mortality, and travel:
“This world is stranger and more beautiful than could ever be imagined ahead of time. I am struck with enormous gratitude for having gotten to see some of it.”

“I look down at this strange, partially discovered place and think of all the others that exist, half formed and lurking, in my mind: the sheets of light wheeling over the Andes; the snaking, sculpted sand dunes of Namibia; the ancient cities cluttered with a millenium’s worth of objects left lying around – when the volcano erupted, when the city was sacked, when the plague swept through the streets and crumpled half the population in a week. There are many things I have not seen. But there are a few things that I have. Maybe living in the world for a time is enough, even if you don’t get to see all of it. Maybe it is enough. At any rate, it will have to be.”

On Moscow:
“Moscow was upon us in bits, incrementally visible through the murk. The traffic was horrendous, the graffiti multilayered and emphatic. The men were light-skinned and square-jawed, with the kind of bland good looks that have always made me feel slightly menaced. In the women you could see the jostling of the centuries. The old women were Tolstoyan and nearly toothless, with gnomic features and fiercely wrapped handkerchiefs. The young women were as elaborately assembled as the women of the Upper West Side, although some were elegant (swept hair and dark clothes, sparse and gleaming bits of jewelry) and some were tacky (bejeweled bosoms, tricked-out hair, the ruffled pelts of varies unidentifiable Siberian weasels). They moved through the streets like the competing emissaries of various historical periods. In front of a department store, a man sat on a box with a chained and collared chimpanzee. I watched everything in a daze, retroactively registering the miracle of air travel.”

And this one, which I laughed over and admired for the writing:
“The smell, too, was different. Both cities, I noticed, smelled bad – unforgivably, devilishly, abusively bad – in places. There was a smell in one corner near my hotel in Moscow that seemed to make the air opaque; your knees wilted, your spirit flagged, when confronted with it. It seemed concocted, preordained. It didn’t seem like the kind of smell that could have emerged organically without supernatural intervention. If some people look at the complexity of the universe and see proof of God, I look at the dire complexity of that smell and see the suggestion of Satan.”

On relationships, and meeting new people:
“I could see Viktor Davidenko gearing up to think me some kind of puzzle, and this never works – not because people solve you, particularly, but because they learn there’s nothing much to solve. Seeing yourself through somebody else’s eyes is liking taking a guest through your long-unvisited apartment. The bits of your personality that you’ve come to take for granted are like the souvenirs of a life you are already bored of remembering. This old thing?, you want to say, pointing to your personal trivia or your political beliefs or your body. Got in Barcelona for four euros. It’s not real. This joke? I make it all the time. You’ll get sick of it. I am sick of it. But the new person doesn’t know that yet, and you are not actually about to tell him.”

On transience:
“I slid my tongue along my lower teeth, feeling the unevenness that had resurged in recent years. All that orthodontia, such an investment, for what? Though I knew this was a rabbit hole that did not warrant pursuing. When you thought about it, everything – all of life – could seem a series of wasted preparations. Why did you exercise, and why did you consume the appropriate staggering amount of vegetables per day? And why were you vain about your body or your brain or whatever it was you were vain about? And why did you sob for a week and refuse food and lie the wrong way in bed and watch the necrotic light creep over the horizon only because a boy who never loved you still did not? Such anguish, such narcissism, such ahistoricism. All the grand projects were, after all, not so grand. Little petty fits, all of them, piecemeal staving off of the inevitable, scraps and dregs of self-distraction, all of it existing only to mitigate the fact, the central fact, the unbelievable irreducible fact, of our transience.”

[Cloudbuster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Come si gioca una partita quando si è certi della sconfitta?

Questa è la domanda su cui ruota questo incredibile romanzo dell’esordiente duBois. La domanda è complessa e merita un’approfondita riflessione. La prima considerazione che viene in mente è che la risposta non può essere univoca e dipende dal tipo di gara e dalla posta in gioco.
C’è la risposta nobile degli sportivi, quella che tutti avevamo in mente durante il secondo tempo della recente finale Italia-Spagna, secondo cui bisogna comunque continuare ad impegnarsi per onorare la gara e l’avversario e, se possibile, per ricavarne motivazioni ed insegnamenti per la rivincita. C’è, poi, la risposta opportunistica, quella più frequente, che prevede che lo sconfitto cerchi di volgere la situazione a suo favore saltando sul carro del vincitore. Ma ci sono tante situazioni dove la posta in gioco è molto più alta e non c’è possibilità di rivincita ma dove bisogna giocare anche solo per dare senso alla gara e testimoniare che una possibilità di vittoria c’è nella speranza che altri colgano l’ispirazione per proseguire la battaglia. Questo è quello che succede ai protagonisti di questa storia.

Irina Ellison ha visto morire il padre di una terribile malattia degenerativa, la Correa di Huntington, che attacca prima i neuroni inibitori che compromettono i sistemi motori, e poi, progredendo, limita le capacità cognitive e comportamentali, distruggendo completamente la personalità del malato e trasformandolo in un essere inconsapevole. Sotto i suoi occhi ha visto l’inesorabile evoluzione della malattia ed ha ricevuto la terribile condanna che la malattia è ereditaria e nella maggior parte dei casi si manifesta intorno ai 30 anni.
Un verdetto del genere ti sconvolge la vita, ti toglie la prospettiva del futuro, ti fa chiedere quale sia il significato del tempo che si vive. Irina non capisce che senso dare alla propria vita ma è soprattutto determinata a non voler obbligare i propri cari ad assistere al lento disfacimento del suo corpo e della sua mente e per questo motivo decide di tagliare tutti i ponti, abbandonare la propria vita e rifugiarsi in un mondo in cui nessuno la conosce e la compatisce. Scartabellando tra le carte paterne scopre una lettera che il padre, appassionato scacchista, aveva inviato al campione sovietico Alekasendr Bezutov, in cui gli chiedeva come si gioca una partita quando la sconfitta è certa. E così, Irina decide di lasciare lavoro e affetti per lanciarsi nella folle impresa di trovare Bezutov per conoscere la risposta alla domanda paterna che potrebbe dare un senso anche alla sua vita.

Anche Alekander Bezutov si è più volte trovato a dover affrontare partite il cui esito è certo, anche se da un punto di vista differente. Giovane genio degli scacchi, ha lasciato uno sperduto villaggio dell’estrema periferia orientale della Russia per trasferirsi a Leningrado per sviluppare le sue capacità nella celebre Accademia scacchistica sovietica, quando gli scacchi erano ritenuti uno strumento politico per provare la superiorità sovietica sull’Occidente e vincere la guerra fredda. Qui entra in contrasto con la burocrazia del partito, conosce una misteriosa ragazza-prostituta con cui nasce un complicato rapporto di amore, e si avvicina ad un gruppo di dissidenti che scrivono e distribuiscono un giornalino clandestino, “la storia parziale delle cause perse”. Non c’è nessuna speranza che la loro iniziativa possa scalfire la potenza dell’apparato sovietico ma loro sono giovani e fiduciosi e si lanciano comunque a capofitto in questa impresa disperata nella speranza di un miracolo e per esigenza di testimonianza. Traditi da una spia, verranno denunziati e il capo del gruppo verrà ucciso in un misterioso incidente. Dopo la morte dell’amico, Aleksander abbandonerà la politica e rientrerà nei ranghi del partito per poter inseguire il suo sogno di giocare a scacchi e diventare campione del mondo. Il rimorso per questo presunto tradimento lo torturerà per tutta la vita. Un’altra occasione di dover affrontare il sapore di un’inesorabile sconfitta l’avrà quando, ormai celebrato campione del mondo di scacchi, verrà sconfitto in diretta mondiale in una celebre partita contro un sofisticato computer. La sconfitta sarà provocata da una distrazione, una mossa avventata fatta quasi senza riflettere, e sarà caratterizzata dalla sensazione di impossibilità di poter sfuggire alla inesorabilità di un percorso già segnato. Anche in questo caso Aleksander si alzerà e abbandonerà la partita.

Nella seconda parte del libro Irina ed Aleksander si incontrano incredibilmente a San Pietroburgo nella Russia dell’era Putin. Aleksander, ricco e famoso, è diventato uno dei leader dell’opposizione al governo, e si batte per smascherare la corruzione, l’autoritarismo e l’illegalità su cui si basa il potere del governo. In un paese dove non c’è libertà di stampa, dove gli avversari politici vengono arrestati, processati e condannati con processi sommari oppure sono vittime di misteriosi incidenti, Aleksander è uno dei pochi che si batte rincorrendo il sogno di un paese libero, democratico e senza censura, dove la stampa possa criticare il potere ed il presidente possa essere chiamato ad affrontare una conferenza stampa ostile. Ancora una volta Aleksander si trova a combattere una battaglia il cui destino è già scritto. Molti gli chiedono che senso ha la sua battaglia e lui risponde con la necessità di testimonianza, per dare agli altri almeno la speranza che un cambiamento è possibile perché per poter sconfiggere anche il più potente avversario devi avere almeno l’idea di potercela fare. Aleksander, vuole girare un film che denunci i metodi illegali e autoritari di Putin ed il suo coinvolgimento nell’ondata di attentati che sconvolsero la Russia all’epoca della guerra cecena e sulla cui scia emotiva lui prese trionfalmente il potere. Scoperta la storia di Irina, Alekasander cerca disperatamente di dare una risposta alla sue domande ma non ci riuscirà. La storia termina senza una vera risposta, lasciando al lettore la possibilità di fare le proprie considerazioni.

In conclusione due considerazioni a latere non strettamente legate alla trama. Il romanzo è una dura denuncia del sistema di potere di Putin. Mette i brividi pensare che per anni quest’uomo è stato additato dai nostri governanti come un fedele amico ed alleato della nostra nazione, un campione della democrazia, non come quegli incorreggibili “comunisti” italiani che insistono a criminalizzare il nemico. Del resto le vicende giudiziarie del nostro paese ci hanno fatto capire che, pur con le dovute proporzioni, un poco dei metodi putineschi li abbiamo comunque acquisiti.

La seconda considerazione è legata al fascino che questo libro ha esercitato su di me. Non riuscivo a capire perché questo interrogativo del giocare nel ruolo della vittima designata destasse in me tanto coinvolgimento. In fondo non ho malattie genetiche come Irina né tantomeno sono mai stato impegnato in politica come Aleksander. Poi, qualche giorno fa è arrivata la spending review ed ho visto gli ennesimi tagli all’università ed alla ricerca italiana (all’inizio addirittura controbilanciati con un aumento dei finanziamenti all’istruzione privata) ed ho capito: questa è esattamente la sensazione che provo ogni mattina quando mi reco al lavoro. La sensazione di lavorare in un sistema che qualcuno ha deciso di smantellare, indipendentemente da quello che può dare ed io non ho nessuna possibilità di influire su questa decisione. Perché lo faccio?
Mi sono sempre detto che stavamo attraversando un deserto e bisognava tenere alta una fiamma nella speranza che prima o poi qualcuno venga a prenderla per riportarla in auge. Ma, riflettendoci, forse la risposta pura e semplice è .. .che non so fare altro!

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite close to the end I still could not predict how the story would be resolved, but DuBois closed the novel quite beautifully - almost literally beautiful and with a stunning precision plotwise. Among other things, the novel is about chess, Russian politics and state corruption under Putin, Chechnyan terrorism (Beslan, the theater hostage crisis, bombings), love, courage/cowardice, how we know and understand another person (or persist in misunderstanding), and the terror experienced by a certain sort of individual with a death sentence (a Huntington's diagnosis, specifically). There was a balance between events, intrigue, and both small-scale and grand descriptions of Russian cities, with interiority and reflection. (Okay, perhaps it stalled in the middle, but one perseveres when the writing is promising.) But I had to read slowly since the book required a good bit of work from me as reader - not to follow the plot, but to use my empathetic imagination to envision what the characters were thinking and feeling (apt since the novel is emotional and cerebral).

I highlighted a slew of passages - some to appreciate the prose, some to re-read and maybe think about on a day when I revisit the book. I like that the cover artwork depicts a sky; I just searched the ebook and found more than 28 descriptions of the sky: pallid, luminous, nauseous, white, unleashed, bleeding light, sculpted with lemon-colored light, the color of a mostly-healed bruise (wow!), with indigo folds, in mottled gray, with bats flying like daubs of darkness, in shadowy filaments . . . "Against the horizon, the clouds clumped and cleaved and drew apart in a lazy miosis . . ." and, near the conclusion ". . . the oceanic light came in gusts. It was sheer white before they hit the water." (Sigh. Yes.)

[Frabe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jennifer duBois, statunitense, classe 1983, esordisce alla grande: “Storia parziale delle cause perse” è un romanzo splendido, con due protagonisti… del genere “indimenticabili”, l’americana Irina e il russo Alexandr. Le loro storie, raccontate con scrittura superba, scorrono inizialmente distinte nei rispettivi paesi d’origine e poi s’intrecciano, lo scenario dominante e fondamentale essendo costituito dalla Russia comunista e post-comunista, uno sfondo che protrude e spesso invade pesantemente le vicende dei personaggi lungo l’ampio arco temporale che va dal 1979 al 2008.
Detto questo, non intendo entrare nello specifico della trama: è molto bella, molto avvincente; ma quello che colpisce (in questo e nei grandi romanzi in genere) è “quel di più” riferibile, oltre che alla già menzionata qualità della scrittura, all’intelligenza - che fa riflettere -, al pathos - che emoziona -, all'umanità - che tocca, sentimento e ragione - e quindi, in definitiva, al coinvolgimento pieno - che fa vivere il lettore “dentro” la storia narrata.
Mi ha regalato questo, “Storia parziale delle cause perse”, e... una nuova grande scrittrice, da seguire assolutamente nel tempo: Jennifer duBois.
(Piccole perplessità? Sì, certo, qualche iperbole forse un po’ troppo azzardata, il finale che magari poteva incantare anche di più… Cose così, da mettere decisamente tra parentesi.)

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Modern-day St. Petersburg is the setting for two characters who are both doomed to fail. Irina, an American professor, knows that she will die of Huntington's disease. Alexandr, a Soviet-era chess champion, knows that he cannot beat Putin. I came close to giving this five stars--fascinating setting, perfectly imperfect characters, and one gorgeous sentence after another.

If you have any interest in Russia, this is an amazing book. St. Petersburg comes alive: Brezhnev-era dissident cafes, grungy hostels, bakeries getting ready to open around dawn. In the last third of the book, current politics are a major focus of the book. Irina becomes involved in Alexandr's film project linking Putin to the Moscow apartment bombings and other acts of domestic terrorism.

This is not a fast-paced thriller. It's all character development, for two intensely self-absorbed characters. It's also not particularly funny, the Shteyngart blurb on the cover notwithstanding, although there are some amusing twists in the dialogue. Overall, it's sad, in that why-would-you-expect-life-to-be-good way that I sometimes associate with a Russian/Slavic outlook.

The writing was phenomenal. I could have dog-eared every page.

"It was remembering that he was good at, remembering and imagining. And whether or not these were useful skills for Soviet life, they were things you could do quietly, upstairs in a boardinghouse, alone."

"'I don't brood. I contemplate.'"

"I thought of the map [where] the chicken-fat-yellow USSR [was] hunched above the world like a jaguar in a tree, waiting to pounce."

"The living room smelled like dust and artificial cinnamon--the kind that comes from candles, not from cooking."

"His quasi-British accent made him sound like he was always on the brink of apology. His expression made him look like a person who had never apologized in his entire life."

"I wondered what attenuated mini-romances of 2006 were even like--people must wonder whether they're being dumped for not having a sufficiently robust Internet presence, or whatever. The Internet: a whole new arena in which to fail to significantly exist."

"[The Cold War] was a game about who had consistent access to toilet paper and cheap protein, and at this game, Russia had decidedly lost."

"Alexsandr often came across Nina's array of multicolored teas in the cupboards . . . and they were the only evidence in the kitchen, he often thought, that Nina was a carbon-based life form, requiring consumption for survival."

"In St. Petersburg, there was the fine-dirt smell of eggplant; below it, a casually salty marine smell, like dirty aquarium; and just below that, something meatier and wilder, the smell of iceberg and whale."

[Kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this novel. It was extremely intelligently written, and it kept my interest from start to finish for various reasons. This book made two things that aren't necessarily things that interest me, Russia and chess, seem like things that I not only was interested in during the course of the novel, but things that I now want to learn more about. How much of this novel is taken from history? How much of it is fiction? These thoughts plagued me as I was reading, but in the interest of not wanting to spoil anything for myself, I avoided wikipedia and kept reading. Here, I admit a bias: Jennifer and I worked together during our undergrad days. One of the most pleasing things about this novel was knowing that I knew the author, and knowing that she must have put a lot of her heart and soul in the novel, but not seeing any too-obvious connection to the author throughout the story. My Irina was not my Jennifer, and for some reason this was hugely impressive to me: usually when I read things by people I know, I can't "take them out" of what I am reading. Since I could do this with Jennifer, I feel like the novel was especially great at pulling you into its world. Another aspect of this book that I really loved was the way that the novel was structured worked for it, with the alternating narratives meeting towards the end, with the climax to the narrator's seemingly major conflict as not the climax to the book itself, and with a great actual rising action/denouement at the end of the novel.Finally, there are little things that always make me like a book: excellent vocabulary that doesn't send me to the dictionary TOO often but still makes me think "wow that's a good word" and "what does that MEAN" occasionally; a book that I could recommend both to my most punk rock exboyfriend and my 80 year old Nana and feel like they would both like it, and a book that makes me tear up-- I had to stop reading this book at the end as I sat in front of my students who were silently peer editing one another's papers because I could feel myself getting emotional. I finished the book later, in my office, with no student audience.

[Daryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

How does one proceed in a lost cause? What's your strategy to keep going when you know you're going to fail? These are the central questions in Jennifer DuBois's debut novel. Two stories are interwoven: in 1980s Russia, Aleksandr Bezetov is a chess prodigy and champion. In 2006, Irina Ellison is an English professor who suffers from Huntington's disease. Irina's father, who also suffered from Huntington's, was a fan of Aleksandr and once sent him a letter. Irina jets off to Russia to talk to Aleksandr, who is now running a presidential campaign against Putin. DuBois interweaves these stories brilliantly. The lost cause question can apply to Aleksandr's chess games, or his political campaign, or to Irina's life. The book alternates viewpoints (and for the first half, time eras) in chapters between Aleksandr and Irina. I was a bit bothered initially by Aleksandr's chapters being told in third person, while Irina's were in first person narration, but by the end of the book, I saw the reasoning behind this approach. The other thing that bothered me was the predominance of sentences containing a phrase set off by dashes within it. This was so prevalent in the first couple of chapters (sometimes three to a page) that it made a definite impression on me -- and the fact that this style occurred in both the first and third person narration bothered me. After the first two chapters, however, this quirk disappeared nearly completely. Other than that (admitedly, a minor complaint), I found DuBois to be a wonderful writer. She has a great sense of style and usage. I found myself often stopping to re-read a particularly beautiful sentence to my partner. And the pacing and plot of the book is extremely satisfying, as well. I often find even well-written books stumble toward the end, but the ending of this novel was just perfect. Definitely a new writer to watch. I look forward to her new, upcoming second novel.

[Jeanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the prime of your life, you are diagnosed with Huntington's Disease. You've seen your father die and it's not a pretty death. How do you go on?

Irina, a woman with a PhD in English, discovers her father's letter to Aleksandr Bezetov, a world champion in chess, now a candidate running against Putin for the Russian presidency. In his letter he asks,

You wouldn't be where you are if you weren't mostly a winner--a winner, that is, at those matches that have counted the most. And yet there have been games, matches, tournaments that you've lost. And among these, surely, are games, matches, tournaments that you've known all along you were losing. Surely there are those that have been lost from the start, those in which your intellect proved itself to be the limited and temporary and mortal intellect that it does not always seem to be. When you find yourself playing such a game or match or tournament, what is the proper way to proceed> What story do you tell yourself when that enormous certainty is upon you and you scrape up against the edge of your own self? (p. 54)

Irina travels to Russia, tracks down Aleksandr, and begins working with him so as to answer her father's--and her questions.

This is often a cold journey, as both Aleksandr and Irina live in constant fear and often withdraw from others--afraid of hurting them, afraid of being hurt. Still, these are questions that many of us face both on a daily basis (how can I avoid hurting, being hurt?) and on a more ultimate one (how can I go, knowing that I will eventually die?). For those of us who enjoy chess (and chess plays out on several levels throughout the book), who appreciate others' interior lives (the narrative shifts, chess-like, between Irina and Aleksandr), and who enjoy considering existential issues, this is a very good read.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

When one knows one's facing a lost cause -- whether on the chess board, in one's personal life, in the political realm, etc. -- how does one proceed? So ask Dubois's characters in this ambitious, confident, and assured debut novel. The novel is at its best when it's ruminating on the injustices (cosmically speaking) of life, on "all the lofty questions about grace and catastrophe," and on the desperation and "frustrated energy" attending a lifetime truncated by illness. There are moments of penetrating psychological insight and clarity, which often arrive in the form of a simile ("He could see her studying his face, preparing herself to frame the scene in her memory. Then there was a softening and a fading – it was like watching a person let go of a ledge that she’s been clinging to for so long that there’s a relief in the defeat and an acceptance in the falling"), and other truly devastating and poignant meditations on time, on dying parents, on personal and historical legacies, on the continuity of the self, and on the dangers to that continuity (the fear that everything we do and say and think might one day be "nothing more than the entropic implosion of a condemned building or a dying star"). The novel's split narrative construction sets the quiet desperation and personal tragedy of Irina Ellison against political intrigues in Brezhnev-era Russia; unfortunately, the plot-driven episodes of the latter eventually get to be as chilly as the Russian winter and make parts of the story significantly less absorbing than the rest. Still, if you're one for first novels of writers who will no doubt have notable careers, this one's for you.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is hard to process that this is the debut work of an author. She has taken what is traditionally been a heavy involved subject, life in Russia and created a dirge to the Cold War era, embracing the “interminable stretch of a Russian winter” evoking the cold and dark weather and showing life in Eastern Europe as Dostoyevsky did. Her mind pictures are dramatic, each paragraph as if a postcard into the sole of her characters.
She takes the well-worn subject of Russia’s mastery of modern-day chess, creates a character steeped in the game, Aleksandr and shows us how someone of meager beginnings can build a protected empire through the country’s one-upmanship with America for personal gain and advance through the corrupt political system to mount a run at the presidency against Putin in a quixotic and valiant attempt.
Irina, an American student who was brought up playing chess with her father, and is now preparing to her life to Huntington’s disease, just as her father had done takes on her own impossible dream, and meet the chess-player that her father had sent letters to, and in a role of finding purpose in her life leaves everything behind to chase her lost cause.
Their paths tangle and mesh in the most highly improbable fashion and both help form a lasting impression on each other’s fate as well as Russia itself. An improbable tale of endurance and love that will guide the reader down a path of unrequited expectation.

[Susan (aka Just My Op) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 ½ stars out of 5. Knowing full well that authors often don't choose, or even have much say, in the titles of their books, I got this book partially because of the fabulous title. Whether Ms. Dubois chose this title, I can't say, but I love it.

A complex chess prodigy in brutal Russia, a woman condemned to a slow and horrible death, and their intertwining fates and that of the Soviet Union, Russia, Communism, were all spun together to make a lovely story. The characters have depth, sometimes insight, and sometimes an amazing lack of insight.

Some of the writing was lyrical, beautiful, as were some of the metaphors. Sometimes the writing and the metaphors seemed forced, too studied. The storyline was interesting and engaging, but moved too slowly in places. Irina bemoaning her genetic fate got old even though it was integral to the story.

I like that the author was not afraid to write above the lowest common denominator, included a couple of words I didn't know, but the book wasn't written as though the author was trying to show off all the big words she knows.

In the end, although I enjoyed much of the story, I came away from it feeling ultimately just a little dissatisfied.

I was given a copy of the book for review.

[Amy Warrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised to see that this is a debut novel; I felt in very experienced and competent hands throughout reading this book. It's beautifully written, lots of lovely adjectives and adverbs but none of them get in the way or draw undue attention to themselves.

The two storylines, that of a Russian chess prodigy, Aleksandr, and that of a young American woman, Irina, who may or may not have a hereditary disease, are told in alternating chapters. They eventually merge when Irina sets off on a quest to find and question Aleksandr after finding a letter to him in her father's effects. I thought this part of the story far-fetched but Ms. Dubois carries it off - she just goes ahead and writes it, and it works.

How long does a life have to be, and how we deal with losing it, and what we should be trying to accomplish, are major themes here, but the philosophical meditations never become overkill - they are written in the voice of a pair of believable characters so they sound like our own thoughts would sound, were we to voice them. There's sadness here, but not despair. Not quite a beach read, but well worth the time.

[Dina · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not a bad story, but I have trouble getting past all the errors in the details about Russia. I am sure it is hard to research details of life in another country at another time, but when that time is a fairly recent past and there are literally millions of people that can provide those details, the author and/or editor have an obligation to get someone knowledgeable to fix the mistakes. I'm not talking about one or two details ... almost every time the narrative moves to 1980 Leningrad, the details are all wrong. Flowers, flags, and stuffed animals outside hospital room doors? Private hospital rooms? Three men with no source of income daily visiting a cafe? Alleys smelling of vodka ... come on, even Americans know that vodka has no smell. Anyways, it is just very irritating to keep stumbling on these errors on every page. If you don't know much about life in USSR, you may find the book enjoyable. If you know, find another book to read.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was only so-so for me. Had I not been reading it for a book club, I don't think I would have pushed through and finished it. My lack of affection stemmed largely from two things: 1) the two main characters' lives were strewn with difficulty and little hope, painting a bleak landscape and 2) duBois' writing was lovely and lyrical, but there was way to much of a good thing. Someone needed to tell her to kill her darlings because I ended up skimming many descriptions from word fatigue. Had she eliminated some of those lovely descriptions, the remaining ones would have had so much more impact (and been read!).